The global rise of political religion is one of the defining and most puzzling characteristics of current world politics. Since the early 1990s, religious parties have achieved stunning electoral ...
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The global rise of political religion is one of the defining and most puzzling characteristics of current world politics. Since the early 1990s, religious parties have achieved stunning electoral victories around the world. This book investigates religious politics and its implications for contemporary democracy through a comparison of political parties in Israel and Turkey. While the politics of Judaism and Islam are typically seen as outgrowths of oppositionally different beliefs, the author's comparative inquiry shows how limiting this understanding of religious politics can be. Her cross-country and cross-religion analysis develops a unique approach to identifying religious parties' idiosyncratic and shared characteristics without reducing them to simple categories of religious/secular, Judeo-Christian/Islamic, or democratic/antidemocratic. The author shows that religious parties in both Israel and Turkey attract broad coalitions of supporters and skillfully inhabit religious and secular worlds simultaneously. They imbue existing traditional ideas with new political messages, blur conventional political lines and allegiances, offer strategic political choices, and exhibit remarkably similar political views. The book's findings will be especially relevant to those who want to pass beyond rudimentary typologies to better assess religious parties' capacities to undermine and contribute to liberal democracy. The Israeli and Turkish cases open a window to better understanding the complexities of religious parties. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that the characteristics of religious political parties—whether Jewish, Muslim, or yet another religion—can be as striking in their similarities as in their differences.Less

Beyond Sacred and Secular : Politics of Religion in Israel and Turkey

Sultan Tepe

Published in print: 2008-07-25

The global rise of political religion is one of the defining and most puzzling characteristics of current world politics. Since the early 1990s, religious parties have achieved stunning electoral victories around the world. This book investigates religious politics and its implications for contemporary democracy through a comparison of political parties in Israel and Turkey. While the politics of Judaism and Islam are typically seen as outgrowths of oppositionally different beliefs, the author's comparative inquiry shows how limiting this understanding of religious politics can be. Her cross-country and cross-religion analysis develops a unique approach to identifying religious parties' idiosyncratic and shared characteristics without reducing them to simple categories of religious/secular, Judeo-Christian/Islamic, or democratic/antidemocratic. The author shows that religious parties in both Israel and Turkey attract broad coalitions of supporters and skillfully inhabit religious and secular worlds simultaneously. They imbue existing traditional ideas with new political messages, blur conventional political lines and allegiances, offer strategic political choices, and exhibit remarkably similar political views. The book's findings will be especially relevant to those who want to pass beyond rudimentary typologies to better assess religious parties' capacities to undermine and contribute to liberal democracy. The Israeli and Turkish cases open a window to better understanding the complexities of religious parties. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that the characteristics of religious political parties—whether Jewish, Muslim, or yet another religion—can be as striking in their similarities as in their differences.

This book examines the prospects for advancing reform in Ukraine in the wake of the February 2014 Euromaidan revolution. It examines six crucial areas of reform: identity-memory divides, corruption, ...
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This book examines the prospects for advancing reform in Ukraine in the wake of the February 2014 Euromaidan revolution. It examines six crucial areas of reform: identity-memory divides, corruption, constitution, judiciary, patrimonialism and the oligarchs, and the economy. On each of these topics, the book provides one chapter that focuses on Ukraine’s experience and one chapter that examines the issue in the broader context of other international practice. Placing Ukraine in comparative perspective shows that many of the country’s problems are not unique and that other countries have been able to address many of the issues currently confronting Ukraine. The chapters provide an in-depth analysis of Ukraine’s challenges and describe the difficulties Ukrainians will have in overcoming the numerous obstacles to reform. As with the constitution, there are no easy answers, but careful analysis shows that some solutions are better than others. Ultimately, the authors offer a series of reforms that can help Ukraine make the best of a bad situation. The book stresses the need to focus on reforms that might not have immediate effect, but that comparative experience shows can solve fundamental contextual challenges. Finally, the book shows that pressures from outside Ukraine can have a strong positive influence on reform efforts inside the country.Less

Published in print: 2016-09-07

This book examines the prospects for advancing reform in Ukraine in the wake of the February 2014 Euromaidan revolution. It examines six crucial areas of reform: identity-memory divides, corruption, constitution, judiciary, patrimonialism and the oligarchs, and the economy. On each of these topics, the book provides one chapter that focuses on Ukraine’s experience and one chapter that examines the issue in the broader context of other international practice. Placing Ukraine in comparative perspective shows that many of the country’s problems are not unique and that other countries have been able to address many of the issues currently confronting Ukraine. The chapters provide an in-depth analysis of Ukraine’s challenges and describe the difficulties Ukrainians will have in overcoming the numerous obstacles to reform. As with the constitution, there are no easy answers, but careful analysis shows that some solutions are better than others. Ultimately, the authors offer a series of reforms that can help Ukraine make the best of a bad situation. The book stresses the need to focus on reforms that might not have immediate effect, but that comparative experience shows can solve fundamental contextual challenges. Finally, the book shows that pressures from outside Ukraine can have a strong positive influence on reform efforts inside the country.

This book argues that the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control shape the nature and trajectory of the ways in which developing world cities confront ...
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This book argues that the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control shape the nature and trajectory of the ways in which developing world cities confront the challenge of urban violence. The study introduces business as a pivotal actor in the politics of urban violence, and shows that private sector mobilization can either support or subvert state efforts to stem and prevent urban violence and, more broadly, urban governance. The effects that private sector mobilization have on the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence are contingent on how business communities are institutionally configured within cities and the nature of their relations with political actors and parties. A focus on city mayors finds that the degree to which politicians rely upon clientelism to secure and maintain power weighs heavily on whether they favor responses to violence that perpetuate or weaken exclusionary local political orders. The book builds a new typology of patterns of armed territorial control within cities, each of which poses challenges and opportunities for sustaining distinct political projects in response to urban violence. To demonstrate the framework’s analytic utility the book develops subnational comparative analyses of variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence across Colombia’s three principal cities –Medellin, Cali, and Bogota –and over time within each. The analysis shows that the politics of urban violence is a powerful new lens on the broader question of who governs in major developing world cities.Less

Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence In Latin America

Eduardo Moncada

Published in print: 2016-01-06

This book argues that the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control shape the nature and trajectory of the ways in which developing world cities confront the challenge of urban violence. The study introduces business as a pivotal actor in the politics of urban violence, and shows that private sector mobilization can either support or subvert state efforts to stem and prevent urban violence and, more broadly, urban governance. The effects that private sector mobilization have on the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence are contingent on how business communities are institutionally configured within cities and the nature of their relations with political actors and parties. A focus on city mayors finds that the degree to which politicians rely upon clientelism to secure and maintain power weighs heavily on whether they favor responses to violence that perpetuate or weaken exclusionary local political orders. The book builds a new typology of patterns of armed territorial control within cities, each of which poses challenges and opportunities for sustaining distinct political projects in response to urban violence. To demonstrate the framework’s analytic utility the book develops subnational comparative analyses of variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence across Colombia’s three principal cities –Medellin, Cali, and Bogota –and over time within each. The analysis shows that the politics of urban violence is a powerful new lens on the broader question of who governs in major developing world cities.

The incongruity between territory, citizenry, and nation has long preoccupied students of international migration, nationalism, and citizenship, including the state’s transborder relationship with ...
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The incongruity between territory, citizenry, and nation has long preoccupied students of international migration, nationalism, and citizenship, including the state’s transborder relationship with its “external” members (e.g., emigrants, diasporas, and ethnonational “kin”). This book is a comparative, historical, and ethnographic study of the complex relationships among the states in the Korean peninsula, colonial-era Korean migrants to Japan and northeast China and their descendants, and the states in which they have resided. Despite a widespread and quasi-primordial belief in Korean ethnic nationhood, the embrace of these transborder coethnic populations by the Japanese colonial state and the two postcolonial states (North and South Korea) has been shifting and recurrently contested. Through analyses of transborder membership politics in the colonial, Cold War, and post-Cold War periods, the book explores under what circumstances and by what means the colonial and postcolonial states have sought to claim (or failed to claim) certain transborder populations as “their own,” and how transborder Koreans have themselves shaped the making, unmaking, and remaking of transborder ties as they have sought long-distance membership on their own terms. Extending the constructivist approach to nations/nationalisms and the culturalist/cognitive turn in recent theorizing on the modern state to a transnational context, it demonstrates that being a “homeland” state or a member of the “transborder nation” is not an ethnodemographic fact, but an arduous and revocable political achievement, mediated profoundly by the historically evolving and mutually interlinked bureaucratic practices of the state.Less

Jaeeun Kim

Published in print: 2016-07-20

The incongruity between territory, citizenry, and nation has long preoccupied students of international migration, nationalism, and citizenship, including the state’s transborder relationship with its “external” members (e.g., emigrants, diasporas, and ethnonational “kin”). This book is a comparative, historical, and ethnographic study of the complex relationships among the states in the Korean peninsula, colonial-era Korean migrants to Japan and northeast China and their descendants, and the states in which they have resided. Despite a widespread and quasi-primordial belief in Korean ethnic nationhood, the embrace of these transborder coethnic populations by the Japanese colonial state and the two postcolonial states (North and South Korea) has been shifting and recurrently contested. Through analyses of transborder membership politics in the colonial, Cold War, and post-Cold War periods, the book explores under what circumstances and by what means the colonial and postcolonial states have sought to claim (or failed to claim) certain transborder populations as “their own,” and how transborder Koreans have themselves shaped the making, unmaking, and remaking of transborder ties as they have sought long-distance membership on their own terms. Extending the constructivist approach to nations/nationalisms and the culturalist/cognitive turn in recent theorizing on the modern state to a transnational context, it demonstrates that being a “homeland” state or a member of the “transborder nation” is not an ethnodemographic fact, but an arduous and revocable political achievement, mediated profoundly by the historically evolving and mutually interlinked bureaucratic practices of the state.

This book explains why Latin America’s pattern of protective labor regulation has been surprisingly resistant to fundamental reform over the course of the last century, especially during the period ...
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This book explains why Latin America’s pattern of protective labor regulation has been surprisingly resistant to fundamental reform over the course of the last century, especially during the period of intense pressure from globalization. It develops a theory based on two factors – the skill distribution in the economy and the organizational capacity of labor – to explain the remarkable continuity in national-level labor codes. It argues that where workers have mid- to high-level skills and sufficient leadership or ties to political parties, they can be most effective in forming coalitions that preserve or increase the protectiveness of labor legislation. Where unskilled labor predominates, and where ties to political parties are weak, labor regulation is less developed and less protective. This theory is tested in two ways. First, the book takes a quantitative approach, conducting a systematic analysis of the determinants of 23 different labor law provisions in 18 Latin American countries over the period from the 1980s to the 2000s. Second, it employs a longer-term qualitative historical analysis to trace out labor law development and attempted reform over the last century in three representative countries: one which had highly developed protections for individual workers, but whose laws fragmented collective action by unions (Chile), one which provided only narrow protection of individual workers but accorded unions significant freedom (Peru), and one that was strongly protective of both individual workers and the unions that represented them (Argentina).Less

Matthew E. Carnes

Published in print: 2014-08-13

This book explains why Latin America’s pattern of protective labor regulation has been surprisingly resistant to fundamental reform over the course of the last century, especially during the period of intense pressure from globalization. It develops a theory based on two factors – the skill distribution in the economy and the organizational capacity of labor – to explain the remarkable continuity in national-level labor codes. It argues that where workers have mid- to high-level skills and sufficient leadership or ties to political parties, they can be most effective in forming coalitions that preserve or increase the protectiveness of labor legislation. Where unskilled labor predominates, and where ties to political parties are weak, labor regulation is less developed and less protective. This theory is tested in two ways. First, the book takes a quantitative approach, conducting a systematic analysis of the determinants of 23 different labor law provisions in 18 Latin American countries over the period from the 1980s to the 2000s. Second, it employs a longer-term qualitative historical analysis to trace out labor law development and attempted reform over the last century in three representative countries: one which had highly developed protections for individual workers, but whose laws fragmented collective action by unions (Chile), one which provided only narrow protection of individual workers but accorded unions significant freedom (Peru), and one that was strongly protective of both individual workers and the unions that represented them (Argentina).

The essays in this book analyze and explain the crisis of democratic representation in five Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. In this region, disaffection with ...
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The essays in this book analyze and explain the crisis of democratic representation in five Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. In this region, disaffection with democracy, political parties, and legislatures has spread to an alarming degree. Many presidents have been forced from office, and many traditional parties have fallen by the wayside. These five countries have the potential to be negative examples in a region that has historically had strong demonstration and diffusion effects in terms of regime changes. The book addresses an important question for Latin America as well as other parts of the world: Why does representation sometimes fail to work?Less

The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes

Published in print: 2006-08-08

The essays in this book analyze and explain the crisis of democratic representation in five Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. In this region, disaffection with democracy, political parties, and legislatures has spread to an alarming degree. Many presidents have been forced from office, and many traditional parties have fallen by the wayside. These five countries have the potential to be negative examples in a region that has historically had strong demonstration and diffusion effects in terms of regime changes. The book addresses an important question for Latin America as well as other parts of the world: Why does representation sometimes fail to work?

How and why does a semi-democratic regime—one that developed as a result of significant degree of democratization—collapse without experiencing further democratization? This book answers these ...
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How and why does a semi-democratic regime—one that developed as a result of significant degree of democratization—collapse without experiencing further democratization? This book answers these questions through a case study of the collapse of the semi-democratic regime in prewar Japan. Japan's gradual democratization after the Meiji Restoration in 1867 led to the rise of the semi-democratic regime in 1918. It was characterized by the rule of party government and electoral participation by a significant portion of the population. Confronted with a series of threats from the military, it collapsed in 1932 after the May Fifteenth Incident. This book explains the collapse of this regime as a result of shift in the balance of power between the party government and the military. It focuses on Meiji Constitution's institutional constraints as well as legitimacy and the semi-loyalty of political parties and their memebers as factors that affected the relationship/Although the Meiji Constitution placed the party government in a weak position institutionally with respect to the military, the high legitimacy that it claimed initially enabled it to sustain the regime from the outset. Gradually, however, its legitimacy eroded and political parties became semi-loyal to the regime, tolerating or encouraging the military’s challenge against to it. This led to the collapse of the semi-democratic regime.Less

Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan : Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime

Harukata Takenaka

Published in print: 2014-07-02

How and why does a semi-democratic regime—one that developed as a result of significant degree of democratization—collapse without experiencing further democratization? This book answers these questions through a case study of the collapse of the semi-democratic regime in prewar Japan. Japan's gradual democratization after the Meiji Restoration in 1867 led to the rise of the semi-democratic regime in 1918. It was characterized by the rule of party government and electoral participation by a significant portion of the population. Confronted with a series of threats from the military, it collapsed in 1932 after the May Fifteenth Incident. This book explains the collapse of this regime as a result of shift in the balance of power between the party government and the military. It focuses on Meiji Constitution's institutional constraints as well as legitimacy and the semi-loyalty of political parties and their memebers as factors that affected the relationship/Although the Meiji Constitution placed the party government in a weak position institutionally with respect to the military, the high legitimacy that it claimed initially enabled it to sustain the regime from the outset. Gradually, however, its legitimacy eroded and political parties became semi-loyal to the regime, tolerating or encouraging the military’s challenge against to it. This led to the collapse of the semi-democratic regime.

Populism is a key feature of contemporary democratic politics, and is on the rise across the world. Yet current approaches to populism fail to account for its shifting character in a rapidly changing ...
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Populism is a key feature of contemporary democratic politics, and is on the rise across the world. Yet current approaches to populism fail to account for its shifting character in a rapidly changing political and media landscape, where media touches upon all aspects of political life, a sense of crisis is endemic, and where populism has gone truly global. This book presents a new perspective for understanding populism, arguing that it is a distinct ‘political style’ that is performed, embodied and enacted across a number of contexts. While still based on the classic divide between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, contemporary populism’s reliance on new media technologies, its relationship to shifting modes of political representation and identification, and its increasing ubiquity has seen the phenomenon transform in new and unexpected ways. Demonstrating that populism as a political style has three central features – appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’; ‘bad manners’; and crisis, breakdown or threat – the book uses a performative framework to examine its key actors, stages, audiences and mise-en-scène. In doing so, it draws on illustrative examples from across the globe, moving beyond the usual cases of Western Europe and the Americas to also take in populism in the Asia-Pacific and Africa. Working across the fields of comparative politics, media communications and political theory, it seeks to account for populism’s complex relationship to crisis, media and democracy, ultimately offering an important and provocative new approach for understanding populism in the twenty-first century.Less

The Global Rise of Populism : Performance, Political Style, and Representation

Benjamin Moffitt

Published in print: 2016-06-01

Populism is a key feature of contemporary democratic politics, and is on the rise across the world. Yet current approaches to populism fail to account for its shifting character in a rapidly changing political and media landscape, where media touches upon all aspects of political life, a sense of crisis is endemic, and where populism has gone truly global. This book presents a new perspective for understanding populism, arguing that it is a distinct ‘political style’ that is performed, embodied and enacted across a number of contexts. While still based on the classic divide between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, contemporary populism’s reliance on new media technologies, its relationship to shifting modes of political representation and identification, and its increasing ubiquity has seen the phenomenon transform in new and unexpected ways. Demonstrating that populism as a political style has three central features – appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’; ‘bad manners’; and crisis, breakdown or threat – the book uses a performative framework to examine its key actors, stages, audiences and mise-en-scène. In doing so, it draws on illustrative examples from across the globe, moving beyond the usual cases of Western Europe and the Americas to also take in populism in the Asia-Pacific and Africa. Working across the fields of comparative politics, media communications and political theory, it seeks to account for populism’s complex relationship to crisis, media and democracy, ultimately offering an important and provocative new approach for understanding populism in the twenty-first century.

Why do some countries in the developing world achieve growth with equity, while others do not? If democracy is the supposed panacea for the developing world, why have Southeast Asian democracies had ...
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Why do some countries in the developing world achieve growth with equity, while others do not? If democracy is the supposed panacea for the developing world, why have Southeast Asian democracies had such uneven results? In exploring these questions, the author of this book argues that the realization of equitable development hinges heavily on strong institutions, particularly institutionalized political parties and cohesive interventionist states, and on moderate policy and ideology. The book is framed as a structured and focused comparative-historical analysis of the politics of inequality in Malaysia and Thailand, but also includes comparisons with the Philippines and Vietnam. It shows how Malaysia and Vietnam have had the requisite institutional capacity and power to advance equitable development, while Thailand and the Philippines, because of weaker institutions, have not achieved the same levels of success. At its core, the book makes a claim for the need for institutional power and institutional capacity to alleviate structural inequalities.Less

The Institutional Imperative : The Politics of Equitable Development in Southeast Asia

Erik Kuhonta

Published in print: 2011-08-18

Why do some countries in the developing world achieve growth with equity, while others do not? If democracy is the supposed panacea for the developing world, why have Southeast Asian democracies had such uneven results? In exploring these questions, the author of this book argues that the realization of equitable development hinges heavily on strong institutions, particularly institutionalized political parties and cohesive interventionist states, and on moderate policy and ideology. The book is framed as a structured and focused comparative-historical analysis of the politics of inequality in Malaysia and Thailand, but also includes comparisons with the Philippines and Vietnam. It shows how Malaysia and Vietnam have had the requisite institutional capacity and power to advance equitable development, while Thailand and the Philippines, because of weaker institutions, have not achieved the same levels of success. At its core, the book makes a claim for the need for institutional power and institutional capacity to alleviate structural inequalities.

Courts, like other government institutions, shape public policy. But how are they drawn into the policy process, and how are patterns of policy debate shaped by the institutional structure of the ...
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Courts, like other government institutions, shape public policy. But how are they drawn into the policy process, and how are patterns of policy debate shaped by the institutional structure of the courts? Drawing on the experience of the Brazilian federal courts since the transition to democracy, this book examines the judiciary's role in public policy debates. During a period of energetic policy reform, the high salience of many policies, combined with the conducive institutional structure of the judiciary, ensured that Brazilian courts would become an important institution at the heart of the policy process. The Brazilian case thus challenges the notion that Latin America's courts have been uniformly pliant or ineffectual, with little impact on politics and policy outcomes. The book also inserts the judiciary into the scholarly debate regarding the extent of presidential control of the policy process in Latin America's largest nation. By analyzing the full Brazilian federal court system—including not only the high court, but also trial and appellate courts—it develops a framework with cross-national implications for understanding how courts may influence policy actors' political strategies and the distribution of power within political systems.Less

Judging Policy : Courts and Policy Reform in Democratic Brazil

Matthew M. Taylor

Published in print: 2008-02-26

Courts, like other government institutions, shape public policy. But how are they drawn into the policy process, and how are patterns of policy debate shaped by the institutional structure of the courts? Drawing on the experience of the Brazilian federal courts since the transition to democracy, this book examines the judiciary's role in public policy debates. During a period of energetic policy reform, the high salience of many policies, combined with the conducive institutional structure of the judiciary, ensured that Brazilian courts would become an important institution at the heart of the policy process. The Brazilian case thus challenges the notion that Latin America's courts have been uniformly pliant or ineffectual, with little impact on politics and policy outcomes. The book also inserts the judiciary into the scholarly debate regarding the extent of presidential control of the policy process in Latin America's largest nation. By analyzing the full Brazilian federal court system—including not only the high court, but also trial and appellate courts—it develops a framework with cross-national implications for understanding how courts may influence policy actors' political strategies and the distribution of power within political systems.

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